Fans of Ministry better hurry if they want to see them live. Al Jougensen is ready to move on.
“Ive got other things to do,” Jourgensen explains. “I just started a label (13th Planet Records), and I want to sign some bands and really build it up like I did with WaxTrax in the 80s, not just a vanity label. I think its time — and Ill be leaving on the top of my game instead of hanging on too long and doing crappy Aerosmith and Rolling Stones albums 30 years later.”
Full Scoop: Billboard.com
This is a little off the beaten path for our news, but I saw on the BoingBoing.net blog this morning a link to a YouTube video of The Velvet Undergrounds John Cale and Lou Reed performing the song Heroin in France in 1972. This is a rare glimpse at a performance of the band that influenced so much of Rock and Roll from the 1970s onward. The Velvet Underground was where (in my opinion) Rock discovered its dark side and was a true counterpoint to the relatively straight laced pop music at the time. How many other bands in the sixties can you think of that were singing about addiction, prostitutes, and murder among other taboo subjects? I first heard them in the mid-80s when I started exploring the “Alternative” music of the time. Every other artist mentioned them as an influence so I felt I needed to check them out. It was well worth it. Make sure you check out also check out some of the other videos there,especially the one with Nico signing Femme Fatale.
The Gauntlet reports: Cold have decided to break up and call it a day. A statement
below is from frontman Scooter Ward on the bands official message board regarding
the split:
“Today we will no longer survive as cold. sam and i will write new songs, make a new
record and see you guys in due time..we love jeremy .hes my brother and i welcome
him at anytime.we thank the cold army for all their support throughout the years,
the memories the love and the freinds we have made are worth everything…”
This is a shame. I enjoyed their music
Day in Rock reports: Wanna hear what Rebel Meets Rebel (the project feature Vinnie
Paul, Dimebag, Rex Brown, Country writer David Allen Coe) sounds like? You can now
hear snippets from the album before it hits stores in May. Head on over to the full
story link to check out some of the songs that will cruch the worlds of metal and
country together.
The lawsuit against Sony for including rootkit software with its music CDs has been settled. The company agreed to compensate those who bought the CDs that had the XCP copy protection and provide them with utilities to uninstall the software from their computers. Buyers can exchange the XCP CDs for non-copy-protected versions, download free albums and/or receive a cash payment of $7.50 plus an album download. You have to return the XCP CD to Sony or send them your receipt where you returned it to a retailer.
As some of you may know, I am a huge Henry Rollins fan. I enjoy his spoken word and have liked all of his music back to Black Flag. Henry is one of those guys who has known many bands and seems to know every guy who ever picked up a guitar. He has resumed a show he did last year from Indy 103.1 http://www.indie1031.fm/ called Harmony in my Head. Its on 8 PST on Tuesdays the website is: http://www.harmonyinmyhead.com/
This is a cool show where he DJs for about 2 hours. He plays music that he likes, and he cover quite a range of genres. For each song he gives a lead-in about why he likes the song and typically he will tell some “back-story” about the band.
You can stream this from the Indy 103.1 website, check it out.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a listing of all of the CDs that are believed to have Sonys wonderful (full sarcasm there) rootkit DRM. While the list may not be exhaustive the site instructs you in how to identify these tainted disks when browsing at your local music store.
You also want to make sure that you turn off autorun before you use one of these CDs in you computer.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.
Issue 13.07 of Wired has a brief essay from the author William Gibson regarding the future of music and the impacts of remixing in particular:
“Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Todays audience isnt listening at all – its participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.”
Read it. It will make you smarter. Trust me.
Thank you to BoingBoing for the link.
Metal Blade reports: MTV has launched on demand programming available through Comcast and Charter cable providers. Through MTV On Demand viewers can select from a menu with a variety of movies, music and shows. More Metal Blade videos will be available soon through MTV On Demand. Right now you can check out Unearths video for “Zombie Autopilot”. In July look for Into the Moats “Dead Before I Stray”, and in August The Red Chords “Antman” and As I Lay Dyings “Confined”.
Full Story – http://metalblade.com/mbr-updates2005/mbr-updates/MBupdate6-24-05.html
Its a shame its come to this, but at least there will be some outlet for cool music.
siNs metal news reports: According to Harddrive Radio, former SOiL lead singer Ryan McCombs has been enlisted as the replacement for DROWNING POOLs Jason Gong Jones, who recently left the band for “personal” reasons. [see full story for a rumor about the bands fate]
Full Story – Here
I really liked Soil and I dig Drowning Pool. Im just not sure what these guys would sound like together.. Still, I am interested to see.
Walking down the street today I saw that the band “Skamasutra” was going to be playing in my community at some point this summer.
Dont get me wrong, I really enjoy ska music most of the time, but is it some unwritten rule that all ska bands must at least consider having a name with the word “ska” in it somehow?
Why hasnt this trend carried over to other musical forms? Why arent country bands required to have the word “redneck” somewhere in it? or maybe just “red” or “cow” to make it simple for them. Emo bands and bands that have names that sound like novels would have to include the word “whine”, and all of these new bands that sound like they stepped right out of the seventies could include the word “crap”
Just think of how much easier it would be to identify a bands sound without hearing them at all. I would know right away that I didnt really want to hear “Whiny Day Real Estate” or “Alabama Rednecks” or “The Flaming Crap”.
Just a thought that occurred to me this afternoon.
If you found this internal discussion particularly moving (and I know you did), feel free to jump into the forums and leave some witty comments in the Random Music Thought thread.
This reissue on compact disc of Stage, considered the finest of David Bowie’s live recordings, presents the songs in their original order of play with precise reproduction. Continue reading David Bowie Stage Limited Edition Live
Amazon has created a page on their site listing all of the mp3s that they have available as free previews. A wide variety of stuff there so check it out and score some free tunes.